


440. flat line

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [260]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-17
Updated: 2017-03-17
Packaged: 2018-10-06 11:48:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10333988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: Sarah shot Helena. That's just the fact of it.





	

Sarah shot Helena. That’s just the fact of it. Sarah pulled the trigger, and the gun went off, and now Helena is dead. Art offered her his couch to sleep on tonight – made the saddest face when he offered it, so she couldn’t say no – and when Sarah locked herself in his bathroom it took her a while to realize why she was scrubbing so hard at her hands under the running water. Everything smells like gunpowder. Her hands have been itching all day; pulling that trigger on Rachel startled Rachel but didn’t startle Sarah until the afterwards.

(Running through the halls of the DYAD, back towards the night sky, she kept seeing the look of fright on Rachel’s face. She kept seeing Rachel fall, only Rachel hadn’t fallen. _I just did it_ , she’d imagined saying to Rachel. _I could do it again, right now, I could do it to you too, I’m just that person now_. But she hadn’t said it.

Is she a terrible person for not remembering until afterwards? She held that gun so easy. Pulled that trigger so easy. Is she a terrible person? Is she? Is she? Is she? Is she? Who’s going to tell her?)

Gunpowder in her lifeline and she can’t wash it out. Sarah’s sister dead and she can’t wash it out. She just kept on scrubbing at her hands, Art’s shitty generic hand soap and his sputtering water, and she didn’t look up to the mirror.

* * *

Sarah shot Helena. That’s just the fact of it. Helena can’t stop prodding at that fact in her brain, over and over, with sticky fingers. After Sarah stumbled to her feet and ran out of the warehouse, muffling desperate breaths, Helena had lifted her hand and tried to touch the bullet. She shoved her finger deep into her chest but couldn’t find it, and then the pain shot stars across her vision and she had to put her hand down.

“Ow,” she’d told the dark, like that could sum everything up. Sarah shot Helena. Sarah didn’t want to make a family with Helena. Sarah left Helena behind, and only Helena to take care of herself. Ow. Oh, Sarah, ow.

Helena had to take care of Helena, but she couldn’t stand up. She watched the starless ceiling. What was there to get up for, anyway? Besides the need to live. Besides the wind-up key in her back, tucked between her wings. Besides all that. What reason, if Sarah slammed the door behind her when she ran?

Helena’s legs folding underneath her. Helena’s knees shoving her up to standing. Helena’s hands tying the belt tight enough that she couldn’t feel the bullet every time her heart beat. Ow.

* * *

“Why don’t we start with that? Who is Helena?”

* * *

Helena had to shove her weight against the door of the warehouse to force it open. She stumbled out into the street, groaned and choked through the pain of it. One foot in front of the other, little soldier. It was raining outside, she remembers. Just slightly. Enough to make Sarah’s shirt stick straight to her bones.

Somewhere outside an ambulance wailed, but it wasn’t for Helena. Nobody would come for her; only one person would, and Sarah locked him up in a cage. And Helena left him for Sarah, anyways, leaping from a roof and hoping someone below would catch her _bang_. Bang and Sarah didn’t. Bang and Sarah let her fall, all the way down.

Helena limping to the hospital. Helena taking a maze of back alleys, imagining the map of her veins. The warehouse her heart, in the wrong place to mean anything. She kept closing her eyes, but she always opened them again.

* * *

“She was—”

(my sister)

(lonely)

(absolutely terrifying, Art, and absolutely terrified)

(desperately in need of a shower)

(my sister, and I killed her)

“—another one of us,” Sarah had said, instead of any of those things. She drank more bourbon from her glass. She let the bitterness be from that and not the words between her teeth. “Trained by the Proletheans, those religious arseholes. Hunting us. Killing us.”

“You said _was_ ,” Art said.

“Yeah,” Sarah said. “I did.”

* * *

Helena doesn’t know this, but they put the bullet in a tray. It was warped and blackish-silver. It didn’t really mean anything; it wasn’t a story, just a crumpled piece of metal. But they took it away from her. They put Helena to sleep, and then they took that bullet out.

* * *

She imagined ways she could explain it, if she had to – the whole night after Art went to sleep, Sarah running her fingers halfway through her hair and then giving up, Sarah brushing her teeth with toothpaste smeared on a fingertip. _Yeah_ , she would have said. _I had to do it. I didn’t have a choice._

She could have told Art about the body. Art would have sent people he trusted, it would have gotten cleaned up. Sarah could have kept Helena’s ashes somewhere, a reminder of all the ways she fucked up. But she didn’t do any of that. Instead she left Helena’s body to slowly, sweetly decay. Alone in the dark. Helena lying there, alone in the dark. Watching the ceiling. Waiting for Sarah to come back and love her.

* * *

Helena lying there, asleep in a hospital bed. Her eyelids are closed. She is dreaming about Sarah, but she won’t remember it when she wakes up.

* * *

Sarah lying there, wide awake on Art’s couch. Her eyes are open; she is watching the dark. She is thinking about Helena, and no matter what she does she can’t stop.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


End file.
